You are so young and so new, yet I see that you are so broken and burnt and hollowed. I see it; you think no one has ever lived like you, that you are alone and forsaken and will be left to trudge through this life with no solace and all heartache. So you fight and bite and push and shove, make a name for yourself, a reputation of strength, a pillar of fortitude and unwavering stoicism. But I'm here to say that I do know you, that I do see you. I'm here to say that I see right through you and your angry words and your molten eyes.

Everything about your body screams that you are bold and strong. But you shy from being touched and your voice is a tender riot of bloody words that leak too softly for the scarlet truth of them to ever be heard. I see your melting heart dripping with the need to build a connection, your hands scarred and roughened from reaching out only to be burned, your bones filled with the leaden ache of empty loneliness and resentment. And I'm telling you that the connection you've turned your back on is still there, ripe for the taking.

He's built you from His bones and His fingerprints are on your heart. I can see it, right there, in everything you are; in the rich darkness of the earth embedded in your bones, in your eyes holding secrets of untrod paths, of roads less travelled by, in the raging river current of motion that courses through your muscles, in the lightning striking where your fingers touch.

I see His breath wound into the DNA of your cells, so deeply embedded that even as you refuse to acknowledge what you lost, your every selflessly born act of kindness and every softly spoken word of comfort desperately shouts of some deep knowledge and some special something more. Even as you sit alone in your thoughts, your heartache and bitterness mix with the sweet scent of your rosey past and your still flickering Hope.

Hands still reach out to hold on to you, tight and despairing of the consequences should they fail. I see them, the bruises of your unceasing struggle for the hurtling spiral that is disguised as freedom. But I see also the remnants of why you once found love and hope so easy. I see it in the gentleness towards the weak, the servant's heart you lug about in your bag of broken gifts, ready to hand it out to whoever needs it. I see it in the way you feel like you can only breathe when the scent of the asphalt and the scream of engines and voices - so similar now that it freezes your heart - are drowned by petrichor and creation.

I know that you have never believed in luck or fate, and no longer trust in "God's will be done." He gave up that right when His breathe gave us the voices to make our own choices and His hands released their gentle guidance as we learned to walk. He gave up that right when He gave up on you. You have long since stopped believing in His benevolence, only in His ability and His refusal to make things right. You only have to look around, at the world and this life you are tossed about in, to see that it is true.

But I also know that in your most quiet moments, away from the world and the life and the tossing and turning and tearing and tears, that you still find yourself turning hesitantly inwards towards that part of your bruised heart, still caressed in a grip that wavers and shakes but never breaks, and I know that even now, you have never looked up to pray. You have never presumed to be holy enough to face Him, in all your doubt and anger and love. You have never looked up to see his love beaming back and you have never opened your eyes enough to see that galaxy that he made in the shape of your soul.

I know that you miss feeling the gaze undying and forever reassuring, I know that you long for the warmth that is there even under the harshest of glares, I know that your soul is begging for some semblance of that security and that love, and I know that it is still there. I know it is waiting for you, only for you, you and your love and your return.

I know. I know, I know, I know that you are hurting. And I know that you seek out some healing, and I know that you know that the path you most avoid is the path leading to the purest of balms for all of your heartache and heartbreak. I know that your flickering hope is only still beating back the currents of despair and pitted blank canvas-white noise because you also know.